I found "Dunkirk" rather a chore to watch. Thanks to our Morris MN public library for ordering it for me. It was with great anticipation that I punched in the DVD. I found the movie had no real discernible characters. We constantly see this boundless sea where danger slinks around. Miserable souls fend for themselves. We don't see the Germans. I felt like I might get seasick (just kidding). We always see smoke billowing on the horizon. Young men fend for themselves as planes occasionally streak overhead. Some planes are menacing and some are friendly. Reminds of the old cliche movie line "Is it one of ours?"
We never see full-on combat. The enemy just sort of lurks. It is faceless. I would rather read a historical account of the Dunkirk episode rather than to watch this movie. If you watch the movie without knowing much background, you'll want to seek out some reading material later. A movie like this should do a better job of educating. The movie plods. Men in danger on the water with grim expressions. Some make it and some do not. This is not your father's World War II movie. Perhaps we should not be entertained by WWII movies at all. We are in fact entertained and we need to draw a line between fantasy and reality.
Paul Anka as a GI (in "The Longest Day") is fantasy. Hollywood, perhaps with some spasms of guilt about how combat is so often sanitized, finally gave us "Saving Private Ryan." It is with mixed feelings that we accept the newer, more realistic WWII movies. Blood and gore at its essence is not appealing to watch. A whole series of WWII movies came out in the 1960s that protected us from the more unpleasant stuff. At the end of "The Longest Day" we see Eddie Albert fall into a hole as the rat-tat-tat of a machine gun is heard. That's it, he's dead. He's motionless. No blood. (The "rat-tat-tat" representation is from the "Sergeant Rock" comic books I read as a kid!) A human being is actually harder to kill than that.
Let's consider "The Bridge at Remagen" from the 1960s, starring Robert Vaughn as a conflicted German officer, an officer who has a human element. No blood in this movie either. We see German bodies at the start with uniforms that aren't even torn - they're just limp. Soldiers die pretty efficiently. The movie had appeal because the main characters leaped to the forefront. You could wrap your arms around them. You couldn't beat George Segal and Ben Gazzara as the heroic grunts. The whole story line along with the main characters develop in an obvious way that is compelling. Perhaps the whole Remagen episode would be ripe for a re-make. It takes place in the closing stages of WWII when bridges into Germany turned into a horrible magnet for conflict.
A U.S. commander says that saving the bridge could save tens of thousands of lives. My God, what possessed humanity in the mid-20th Century that we got pulled into such incredible conflict. Maybe we should be whistling past the graveyard today.
The Dunkirk episode reminds us that WWII was very much developed by the time the U.S. plunged in. The whole Dunkirk story is about evacuation. It doesn't seem like the most compelling premise for a good movie. Christopher Nolan is the moving force behind "Dunkirk" as writer, director and producer. There is little dialogue. Nolan decided to tap cinematography and music instead, though there is no music that would leave me whistling a melody afterward. "The Bridge at Remagen" left a distinctive melody, though I smile as I consider that melody more suitable for a western! I wonder why. It's based on my background watching movies, I guess.
"Dunkirk" has won lots of praise. But is this disproportionately from that "artsy" crowd? Let me say this: No way would I consider watching "Dunkirk" a second time. No way would I choose to watch it, if I came upon it while surfing cable TV channels. Compare that to "Tora! Tora! Tora!" of the 1960s, a movie about Pearl Harbor, which is always gripping to watch. It's ditto with "Midway" that had Charlton Heston. "Dunkirk" drags and has a mysterious quality as if the moviegoer isn't really entitled to understand everything that's going on. I'm watching the movie "cold" and I need some help understanding the basic elements. How nice it would be to see a clearly defined character who stays with you, like the Henry Fonda character in "Battle of the Bulge."
"Dunkirk" has already been described as "one of the greatest war films." I don't think that's how the Roger Ebert crowd would describe it. But we couldn't always be certain how Ebert was going to assess a film. (He liked Adam Sandler's "The Longest Yard" in perhaps his most disputed review.) I'm guessing the late critic would describe "Dunkirk" as a morass, just like me. Add the adjective "turgid." Problem is, this seems a rather cold-hearted way to describe a movie that showed the good guys in a rather desperate struggle. The year was 1940. The fall of France is accelerating. Allied soldiers have retreated en masse to Dunkirk. The German attacks seem to have only a pinprick quality. A menacing plane races in and out of the picture.
Nolan thought for a time that he wouldn't need a script! Just improvise, he thought. He was persuaded otherwise, but the script ended up pretty minimal, which you can appreciate when watching the movie. I'm left with images of a vast sea with smoke billowing in the background. You'll find those images linger with you too. Maybe I feel a little detached because there are no U.S. armed forces.
Like "Tora! Tora! Tora!" this is a movie about defeat rather than victory. You have to surmise a positive outcome - in the case of "Tora! Tora! Tora!" it was the awakening of America to the Axis threat, and the sudden mobilization it caused. In the case of "Dunkirk," it's the sense of relief at the evacuation. We see no scenes of Winston Churchill and the generals in the war room. No scenes of generals pushing little plastic boats around a map! The actors are young and unknown. All of the cast is British.
Filming in Dunkirk took place at the location of the real invasion. Filming was done with attention paid to tidal patterns. Special effort was made to minimize the need for CGI. Hey, amen and hallelujah! "Tora! Tora! Tora!" and "Midway" seem quaint with their absence of CGI. The real roaring planes seem quite preferable, not the kind of Japanese Zeroes we saw in "Pearl Harbor" which seemed to be going way too fast. Nolan saw the value of "real" boats and warships. The movie used 6,000 extras in France. The principal cast members did their own stunts. The film was shot in natural lighting. Hans Zimmer developed the musical score. He chose not to watch raw footage of the film while composing.
The box office results for the movie have been impressive, so if that's your criterion, give it a salute. It is the highest-grossing WWII film, not adjusting for inflation, going even beyond "Saving Private Ryan." The people have spoken, I guess.
"Dunkirk" is to WWII what "Cold Mountain" was to Civil War movies. These are somber movies that may be authentic with content but not riveting as cinema. A boundless sea with smoke billowing in the distance. That's how I'll always think of "Dunkirk."
One critic complimented the movie because it didn't have "manufactured sentimentality or false heroics." I don't know, I think these elements - sentiment and heroics - are pretty desirable in movies about war between good and evil. The movies remind us about what was at stake. The heroic characters - e.g. John Wayne! - are composites of the good guys fighting for proper values. A toast to Paul Anka! One critic said Nolan has "without sentimentality or sanctimony, raised the survival film genre to the level of art." The critic proclaims the movie a "classic." "Art" may be the whole problem here. Cinema needs to be compelling even if it exaggerates here and there, gets maudlin or gets sanitized some. How about a new movie about the sinking of the Bismarck? It was a World War One vintage plane that did in that mighty German ship.
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com
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